Intellectual   Leadership   in 
American  History 


Alexander  H,    Bullock 


INTELLECTUAL    LEADERSHIP 


AMERICAN    HISTORY. 


AN   ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE 


SOCIETY    OF    PHI    BETA    KAPPA, 


BROWN  UNIVERSITY,  PROVIDENCE, 

• 

JUNE  15th,  1875. 


BY 


ALEXANDER    H.     BtJLLOCK. 


WORCESTER : 
CHARLES    HAMILTON,    PRINTER, 

PALLADIUM      OFFICE. 

1875. 


£ 
113,6 


ADDRESS 


OUR  theme  should  be  fitting  to  the  year  of  cen- 
tennial anniversaries,  of  which  we  are  passing  the 
threshold.     It  is  apparent  that  the  present  and  few 
succeeding  years,  recalling  the  days  of  our  first  de- 
clared nationality  and  the  series  of  measures  in  the 
council  and   the   field   which   gave   success  to  the 
declaration,  will  become  henceforth  memorable  for 
•2   festal  days.     We  are  to  have  a  time  of  competitive 
g   celebrations  marked  by  liberal  pageant  in  token  of 
S  martial  events,  and  the  sensuous  parts  of  our  nature 

^J 

§  are  likely  to  be  worked  to  their  capacity.  Of  all 
N  that  which  is  to  be  commemorated  the  share  most 
*  striking  to  the  average  every-day  senses  undoubtedly 

Q; 

<  comes  from  the  narrative  of  arms,   and  it  meets  a 

v)  responsive  magnet  in  a  people  under  whose  sober 

J  side   touches   of  military  spirit  have  always  found 

i  quick  reception.     They  have  inherited  a  taste  of  the 

V    soldier's  life.     Descended  from  ancestors  who  for 

& 

more  than  one  hundred  years  after  cisatlantic  colo- 
nization were  engaged  in  war  or  were  every  moment 


Address. 

exposed  to  it,  summoned  now  by  these  thick-coming 
anniversaries  to  recite  the  annals  of  the  field  and  to 
realize  in  their  own  quickened  pulse  the  rapture  of 
victory,  we  need  not  wonder  that  they  seize  upon 
methods  of  commemoration  the  most  demonstrative, 
the  most  cognizable  by  the  outward  senses;  that 
they  subordinate  the  oration  to  the  spectacle ;  that 
they 

"  Let  the  kettle  to  the  trumpet  speak, 

The  trumpet  to  the  cannoneer  without, 

The  cannons  to  the  heavens,  the  heaven  to  earth." 

This  is  according  to  nature,  this  is  Anglo-Saxon, 
this  is  American.  But  it  belongs  to  an  assembly  of 
educated  men  to  discharge  the  same  duty  in  another 
mode  of  procedure.  They  penetrate  beneath  the 
surface  of  historical  narrative,  behind  the  scenery 
of  battles,  among  the  more  subtile  forces  of  our 
national  development,  which  have  been  chief  agencies 
in  conducting  us  to  the  high  situation  from  which  the 
celebrants  may  now  deliver  their  pyrotechnics. 

We  cannot  pass  in  review  from  our  own  advanced 
position  over  the  stirring  Revolutionary  stage,  over 
the  broad  and  picturesque  colonial  period,  back  to  the 
more  serious  era  of  the  advent  and  settlement,  and 
not  pay  tribute  to  the  age  which  went  before  them 
all,  out  of  which  they  sprung,  a  part  of  which  they 
were — to  the  masters  who  directed  the  mind  of 
England  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago,  who  came  here 
in  person  and  in  representatives,  whose  association 
with  our  subsequent  history  is  immortal.  Our  epic 


The  Lead  of  the  Preceding  Age. 

from  the  first  embarkation  down  to  the  last  ad- 
mission of  a  State  is  especially  interesting  to  the 
intelligent  inquirer  for  the  spiritualistic,  the  intel- 
lectual element  which  preceded  and  give  it  birth, 
animated  it  in  all  its  parts,  supplied  its  actors  with 
motive  power,  which  has  made  it  the  story  of  a 
people  sprung  from  the  best  race  of  men  at  the  time 
of  its  matured  strength,  and  advancing  to  a  higher 
plane  of  civilization  than  that  upon  which  it  began. 
The  heroic  courage,  the  sorrow  and  suffering,  the 
adventure  and  enterprise  which  mark  the  century 
from  1660,  when  the  colonies  had  acquired  a  fixed 
and  homogeneous  condition,  down  to  declared  inde- 
pendence, which  give  to  it  in  the  reading  the 
changing  shades  of  serious  annals  and  gay  romance, 
were  the  natural  flowering  of  the  English  mind 
under  the  training  of  an  equal  period  preceding. 

The  beginning  of  the  American  people  was  but 
the  transfer  to  the  transatlantic  continent  of  an 
eclectic  and  adventurous  portion  of  the  English 
nation.  These  passing  anniversaries  carry  us  back 
indeed  to  stages  of  infancy  as  to  numbers,  as  to 
material  appointments  and  possessions,  but  in  the 
higher  forces  of  civilization,  manhood  and  culture, 
there  was  here  from  the  start  the  same  maturity 
which  crowned  the  English  communities  in  the  gold- 
en age  of  Elizabeth  and  her  successor.  Whenever 
you  contemplate  what  that  maturity  was,  how  broad 
in  studied  letters  and  statesmanship,  in  progressive 


Address. 

science  and  art,  and  especially  how  it  bore  on  its 
advancing  crest  the  promise  of  deliverance  from 
spiritual  bondage,  you  are  contemplating  the  actual 
state  of  the  mind  of  the  planters  of  this  nation  when 
they  stepped  from  an  old  country  to  a  new,  only 
changing  the  scene  of  their  life  in  the  conflicts  of 
their  age.  The  spirit  of  Northern  Europe  was  then 
for  the  first  time  in  full  activity  under  immense  in- 
fluences proceeding  from  the  Reformation  and  the 
introduction  of  the  art  of  printing.  At  Frankfort- 
on-the-Main  the  traveller  walks  from  the  public 
square,  where  the  memorial  group  of  bronze  statues 
commemorates  the  introduction  of  printing,  to  the 
house  in  which  Luther  once  lodged  while  in  the 
flesh,  feeling  that  he  is  venerating  in  authentic 
symbols  the  authors  of  a  revolution  of  which  the 
benefits  have  reached  to  every  fireside  in  Christen- 
dom. Slowly  overcoming  the  sleep  of  the  Northern 
communities,  and  moving  with  the  Divine  assurance 
which  always  accompanies  every  true  reform,  these 
resistless  agencies  at  length  imparted  a  stimulation 
to  the  mental  habits  of  Great  Britain  which  the 
successors  of  the  Virgin  Queen  might  check  indeed 
but  could  not  suppress.  The  publication  of  the  re- 
sults of  maritime  voyage  and  discovery  on  this 
continent  spread  a  glamour  over  the  spirit  of  curious 
and  daring  men,  which  scarcely  the  sternest  disap- 
pointment and  disaster  could  dispel.  The  tide  was 
rising  to  its  flood  at  the  opening  of  the  seventeenth 


The  Lead  of  the  Preceding  Age. 

century.  A  higher  poetry  and  philosophy,  strange 
religious  rhapsody  and  religious  exploration,  the 
lessons  of  ancient  and  heroic  freedom  brought  out 
into  alluring  light  by  the  changed  tastes  and  op- 
portunities for  the  old  languages,  a  wider  education, 
another  dispensation  over  the  domain  of  practical 
science  and  invention,  a.  new  destiny  for  the  aim  of 
benevolence  and  philanthropy,  wisdom  of  every  de- 
gree, conceits  of  every  kind,  but  in  all  and  through 
all  a  paramount  and  aggressive  progress  lighted  the 
modern  world  on  its  pathway.  For  the  next  fifty 
years  the  air  was  exhilarant  with  intellectual  vitality. 
The  genius  of  change  penetrated  the  palace,  the 
closet,  and  the  shop,  and  throughout  the  capital  city 
of  our  race  the  vigil  of  night  was  kept  faithful  to 
the  revolutionary  studies.  "God  is  decreeing," 
Milton  said,  "to  begin  some  new  and  great  period," 
and  then  with  quaint  expression  of  the  national  self- 
consciousness  which  has  never  gone  out  of  his 
countrymen  from  that  day  to  this,  he  adds : 

What  does  God  then  but  reveal  himself,  as  his  manner  is,  first 
to  his  Englishmen.  Behold  now  this  vast  city  ;  a  city  of  refuge, 
the  mansion-house  of  liberty,  encompassed  and  surrounded  by 
his  protection  ;  the  shop  of  war  hath  not  there  more  anvils  and 
hammers  waking,  to  fashion  out  the  plates  and  instruments  of 
armed  justice  in  defence  of  beleaguered  truth,  than  there  be  pens 
and  hands  there,  sitting  by  their  studious  lamps,  musing,  search- 
ing, revolving  new  notions  and  ideas  wherewith  to  present  as 
with  their  homage  and  their  fealty  the  approaching  reformation  : 
others  as  fast  reading,  trying  all  things,  assenting  to  the  force  of 
reason  and  convincement. 


Address. 

Such  was  that  age ;  and  such  was  the  strength  of 
the  American  beginning.  Out  of  that  age  and 
under  that  lead  we  came.  Ours  was  not  a  trans- 
fusion of  blood  from  one  set  of  men  into  another; 
nor  an  offshoot;  nor  an  engraftment;  it  was  the 
removal  of  ripening  English  minds  in  English  bodies 
into  another  country.  During  the  fifty  years  of 
active  emigration  as  good  came  here  as  were  left 
behind.  The  early  peopling  of  Virginia  was  by 
the  average  Cavaliers  of  the  day,  under  the  direction 
of  higher  grades  of  intellect  at  their  lead,  and  there 
was  soon  present  a  large  array  of  men  of  education, 
property,  and  condition;  Maryland  from  the  outset 
rose  upon  the  shoulders  of  persons  of  high  birth, 
moved  to  their  destination  by  the  best  thought  at 
home ;  the  ships  of  Massachusetts  brought  here  many 
of  the  choice  sons  of  education,  scholars  in  the 
languages,  of  culture  the  same  that  prevailed  in  Eng- 
land, not  cosmic  indeed  as  modern  learning,  for  the 
old  scholastic  studies  of  the  schoolmen  then  overlaid 
the  universal  mind  of  Europe.  The  names  of  these 
intellectual  leaders  are  too  many  and  too  familiar 
to  need  repeating;  they  rise  at  every  recurring 
thought  of  the  earliest  religious  freedom  of  the 
world  in  Maryland,  and  of  the  most  powerful  repub- 
lican theocracy  of  the  world  in  Massachusetts.  Then 
we  ought  to  consider  that  these  heads  of  the  nascent 
provinces  were  in  constant  intercourse  and  contact 
with  the  best  talent  and  wisdom  of  Europe,  and  that 

8 


Intellectual  character  of  the  settlement. 

our  separate  colonial  histories,  down  to  the  very  day 
of  independence,  associate  the  new  country  and  the 
old  by  ties  which  linked  together  in  personal  relations 
the  wise  and  great  of  both  lands.  Winthrop  and 
Endicott,  Cotton  and  Hooker,  and  their  associated 
managers  in  the  other  provinces,  brought  with  them 
and  kept  up  afterwards  acquaintance  with  the  upper 
life  on  the  other  side.  At  one  time  or  another,  on 
this  or  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  the  heads  of  these 
provinces  were  in  living  familiarity  with  the  high 
discussions  and  high  disputants  under  two  reigns; 
they  saw  and  heard  Lord  Bacon  when  he  pleaded 
gently  and  wisely  for  toleration;  they  remembered 
AVitgift  speaking  softly  for  them,  and  Bancroft 
with  his  frown ;  they  caught  light  from  all  the  central 
sources ;  they  learned  stability  of  faith  from  Pym  and 
from  Sidney,  and  public  law  from  Hale  and  from 
Coke ;  they  received  direct  communication  and  coun- 
sel from  John  Hampden;  they  read  and  perhaps  saw 
acted  the  picturesque  and  doric  Comus  of  Milton, 
and  they  lived  by  the  side  of  the  prince  of  poets  and 
the  prince  of  philosophers,  who  in  the  language  of 
Macaulay  made  their  age  a  more  glorious  and  im- 
portant era  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind  than 
the  age  of  Pericles  or  Augustus.  It  is  their  asso- 
ciation with  living  genius  and  learning  which  is  to 
us  in  this  day  a  lingering  inspiration,  for  such  in- 
struction of  States  lengthens  out  through  the 
generations.  It  is  something  of  value  to  us  that  the 


Address. 

founder  of  Rhode  Island  kept  her  interest  warm  by 
the  side  of  the  throne  through  intimacy  with  the 
learned  historian  and  premier  Clarendon;  that  the 
Carolinas  are  imperishably  related  to  Shaftesbury, 
the  paragon  of  accomplished  ministers,  with  John 
Locke,  the  philosopher  so  quaint,  original,  and  great, 
whose  framework  of  government  did  not  endure  but 
whose  benevolence  survived  to  welcome  the  Hugue- 
nots of  France ;  that  the  Covenanters  of  ]S"ew-  Jersey 
were  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  Milton  while  living, 
as  they  had  been  educated  under  the  writings  of 
George  Buchanan  who  went  before  them ;  that  over 
the  wide  South,  first  named  Virginia,  still  lingers 
a  memory  that  kindles  to  enthusiasm  at  the  mention 
of  their  visitor,  the  incomparable,  the  thousand- 
souled  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

In  thus  speaking  of  the  early  masters  who  have 
left  their  image  in  our  history,  I  am  indulging  in  no 
rhetorical  illusion.  The  difficulty  in  our  apprehen- 
sion of  the  facts  lies  within  our  natural  limitations. 
Remoteness  of  time  casts  a  haze  over  our  perception 
of  the  continuity  and  duration  of  mental  influences 
in  forming  the  character  of  States.  If  we  could 
place  ourselves  in  palpable  connection  with  the  gen- 
erations which  have  passed,  the  train  of  public 
educators  would  pass  before  us  in  life-like  and 
august  procession.  But  this  can  be  only  partially 
attained  by  grouping  in  speech  the  great  per- 
sonages of  history.  A  venerable  and  remarkable 
10 


Continuity  and  Duration  of  Mental  Influences. 

Chief-Justice  of  ]S"ew  England,  dead  within  fifteen 
years,  used  to  say  that  he  once  saw  a  man  whose 
father  had  seen  the  first  child  born  in  the  harbor  of  the 
Pilgrims ;  thus  seeming  to  span  with  his  own  hand 
more  than  two  centuries  of  Massachusetts.  But 
historical  analysis  and  elimination  furnish  to  the 
thoughful  student  a  sufficient  thread  for  tracing  the 
lines  of  descent  in  the  life  of  communities.  In  the 
year  1637,  about  the  time  when  a  governing  power 
was  established  in  the  place  where  we  are  now 
assembled,  he  who  was  afterward  the  author  of 
Paradise  Lost,  made  a  journey  into  Southern  Europe. 
In  Paris  he  met  and  was  entertained  by  Grotius,  who 
first  wrote  for  freedom  of  commerce  against  maritime 
restrictions ;  while  he  remained  there  Descartes  put 
to  press  his  first  great  philosophical  treatise,  which 
is  still  quoted  among  the  causes  of  change  in  modern 
thought;  in  Italy  he  turned  aside  to  visit  the  injured 
Galileo,  whose  persecution  was  a  feature  of  the 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  of  the  time;  and  in  the  album 
of  an  Italian  nobleman  at  Genoa  he  wrote  his 
autograph  after  that  of  Thomas  Wentworth,  the 
brilliant  Earl  of  Strafford.  We  find,  therefore,  in 
this  group  of  cotemporaries,  thus  accidentally 
brought  together,  five  first-rate  figures  that  were 
directly  allied  to  the  advancement  of  our  own 
country.  Grotius,  that  "chief  of  men,"  who  laid 
the  foundation  of  international  intercourse  in  the 

principles  of  justice,  whose  doctrines  educated  the 

11 


Address. 

colonies  to  an  early  and  constant  resistance  of  the 
navigation  acts  of  Parliament  which  resulted  in 
their  independence;  Descartes,  the  revolutionist 
philosopher,  who  enunciated  the  law  of  individual 
consciousness  and  intellectual  freedom,  which  at  once 
became  seminal  and  vital  in  every  provincial  organ- 
ization on  this  side,  and  which  to-day  underlies  the 
constitution  of  every  American  commonwealth; 
Galileo,  one  of  the  pioneers  and  one  of  the  martyrs 
of  the  revolt  of  science,  whose  misfortunes  under  in- 
quisitorial absolutism  reached  the  ears  of  the  brother- 
hood of  reform  and  helped  raise  the  party  which 
swept  with  human  rights  over  England  and  the  new 
world  in  the  West;  Lord  Straiford,  who  returned 
home  to  aid  our  cause  under  Charles,  by  his  betrayal 
of  the  franchise  of  his  country  and  our  own,  and 
after  granting  no  lenity  to  our  friends  or  our  cause 
at  length  stretched  his  own  neck  upon  the  scaffold ; 
and  John  Milton,  who  unlike  his  fellow-countryman 
and  fellow-traveller,  stood  fast  to  the  challenge  of  his 
conscience,  and  proclaimed  in  immortal  prose  the 
brave  thoughts  of  the  new  dispensation, 

"In  liberty's  defense,  a  noble  task, 

Of  which  allEurope  rang  from  side  to  side," 

which  have  moved  to  triumphant  deeds  eight  genera- 
tions upon  this  continent.  It  acquaints  us  with  the 
dignity  of  our  pupilage  thus  to  draw  near  in 
imagination  to  our  instructors  long  departed;  it 
brings  before  our  sight  that  splendid  age  from  which 


12 


Power  of  a  few  men. 

we  have  derived  our  power,  to  call  these  masters 
around  us ;  we  are  with  them,  and  they  are  with  us, 
when  we  see  the  blood  of  the  first  Governor  of 
Massachusetts  coursing  among  us  in  the  person  of  a 
most  accomplished  descendant,  and  the  blood  of  an- 
other flowing  for  a  testimony  to  mankind  under  the 
headsman's  axe;  when  we  look  upon  the  regicide 
judges  face  to  face,  Goffe  and  Whalley  on  the  banks 
of  our  Connecticut,  and  Dixwell  amid  his  studies  in 
the  shade  of  New  Haven;  when  Bancroft  and 
Macaulay  only  disagree  whether  Cromwell  and 
Hampden  actually  took  passage  and  went  on  ship- 
board for  Boston;  when  we  know  that  our  own 
Raleigh  was  a  member  of  the  same  club  in  London 
with  Ben  Jonson  and  Shakespeare;  when  every 
spirited  youth  of  Massachusetts  is  stirred  to  the 
study  of  the  martyred  Sidney  by  his  Latin  on  her 
arms. 

Quite  possibly  we  do  not  often  enough  reflect 
how  eifectually  the  spirit  of  one  man,  of  a  few  men, 
may  decide  the  characteristics  of  a  people,  the  destiny 
of  a  State.  Under  the  military  system  of  Europe 
in  former  ages  it  was  within  the  power  of  a  single 
man  to  conquer  a  city  and  write  his  name  upon  its 
walls,  to  modify,  dismember,  reconstruct  a  kingdom, 
and  aflix  to  it  for  a  longer  or  shorter  period  his  own 
projected  will  and  law.  Napoleon  was  the  latest 
and  the  ^eatest  of  this  order,  but  his  imperial 
creations  were  quickly  swept  back  to  their  original 

13 


Address. 

relations — for  though  the  sword  may  carve  the 
pathway  to  a  throne,  it  cannot  engrave  the 
enduring  character  of  a  people.  But  the  moral 
agents  in  the  forming  of  communities  leave  more 
lasting  impressions,  which  are  beyond  the  power 
of  accident  to  remove  or  to  change.  All  the 
laws  of  human  condition,  natural  generation, 
veneration,  imitation,  faith,  tradition,  and  memory 
combine  to  perpetuate  the  mold  of  a  commonwealth 
cast  by  a  master  after  the  pattern  of  divine  virtue, 
and  every  succeeding  intellect  of  grasp  and  sway 
may  add  to  its  symmetry  and  its  strength.  Behold 
at  our  door  the  power  of  a  man  abiding  through 
eight  generations !  Taught  to  shrink  from  the 
forms  of  arbitrary  power  whilst  a  boy  lounging 
about  the  doors  of  the  Star  Chamber,  taught  law 
from  the  living  lips  of  Coke,  tolerant  charity  and 
reforming  love  from  the  private  hours  of  Milton, 
many  languages  at  Oxford  where  the  classic  statue 
of  liberty  broke  in  Grecian  model  on  his  sight, 
taught  experience  and  trial,  sorrow  and  courage  in 
Massachusetts,  Roger  Williams  came  hither  from 
fortunes  as  varied,  as  romantic  as  those  of  John 
Smith  or  Walter  Raleigh,  and  planted  the  first 
purely  free  government  on  the  globe.  While  Des- 
cartes was  writing  out  in  clearest  dialectics,  Williams 
was  establishing  in  concrete  and  everlasting  form 
the  absolute  and  unqualified  freedom  of^conscience 
under  human  government.  I  do  not  know  why  I 

14 


Power  of  a  few  men. 

should  not  say,  since  it  is  true,  that  Massachusetts 
in  her  march  of  progressive  culture  took  two  cen- 
turies almost  to  a  year  from  his  removal  out  of  her 
borders  to  strike  from  her  own  Constitution  the  last 
faded  badge  of  the  connection  of  the  Church  and 
the  State.  The  charter  which  he  dictated  to  the 
Crown,  alone  of  the  original  thirteen  scarcely 
changed  in  essentials,  still  endures  for  his  visible 
monument;  but  in  the  breadth  of  true  catholicity,  in 
the  belief  of  the  benevolence  of  human  nature,  in 
the  cultivation  of  methods  of  peace  and  fraternity, 
in  the  predominance  of  a  religious  sect  never  at 
variance  with  any  other,  which  have  tided  the  life  of 
his  gifts  and  graces  over  the  lapse  of  two  hundred 
and  forty  years,  the  memorial  of  his  invisible 
glory  is  reflected  through  all  habitations  and  all 
hearts.  The  lessons  of  the  teacher  caught  by  the 
leaders  of  the  following  age  have  imparted  a  tinge 
and  flavor  to  the  culture  of  the  State.  Perhaps  in 
imagination,  perhaps  in  the  discernment  of  reality, 
I  seem  to  myself  to  trace  the  extension  of  the  same 
intellectual  freedom  to  another,  who  in  the  next 
century  impressed  his  benevolent  genius  upon  the 
souls  of  this  island  home.  Berkeley  gave  to  this 
people  the  four  midway  years  of  his  life  of  spiritual 
amenity.  Of  every  attainment,  grace  and  accom- 
plishment, admired  by  every  school  of  philosophy, 
while  he  maintained  his  own,  beloved  by  Pope, 
and  Swift,  and  Addison,  while  they  hated  each 

15 


Address. 

other,  beloved  by  all  in  that  galaxy  that  continued 
the  light  of  the  reign  of  Anne  over  that  of  two 
Georges,  he  came  and  erected  his  bower  of  study 
among  the  cliffs  of  this  coast.  In  letters,  and  in 
the  walks  of  village  life,  he  was  to  his  generation  a 
fountain  of  instruction,  and  such  fountains  in  a  free 
commonwealth  never  dry.  And  in  the  century,  still 
the  next,  another  and  kindred  spirit,  native-born 
of  the  island,  devoted  to  the  State  the  latest 
years  of  his  inspiring  lessons,  "the  love  of  wisdom 
and  the  wisdom  of  love,"  so  rich  in  the  field  of 
general  literature,  so  pleading  for  a  wider  scope  of 
popular  education,  for  the  enfranchisement  of  man, 
for  the  world's  peace,  so  aglow  with  the  sweet 
influences  of  Christianity.  To  the  scholarly  and 
devout  resident  of  Newport  the  whole  scene,  of 
cliff,  and  beach,  and  the  breathing  sea,  takes  on  the 
aspect  of  a  memorial  imperishable  to  Berkeley  and 
to  Channing.  Felicitous  has  been  the  lot  of  Rhode 
Island  to  have  had  distributed  over  her  three  centu- 
ries three  intellectual  masters,  whose  administration 
of  her  thought  and  aspiration  was  never  colored  by 
asceticism  or  gloom,  was  always  stimulating,  always 
serene,  always  encouraging,  in  full  accord  with  the 
divine  monosyllable  that  glistens  from  her  shield. 

The  term  of  active  European  emigration  to  this 
land  covered  rather  less  than  the  length  of  two 
generations,  and  all  that  we  are,  and  all  that  we 
have,  may  in  a  large  degree  be  traced  back  to  the 


16 


Statesmanship  of  the  Colonial  Leaders. 

public  character  which  was  then  established.  The 
roll  of  those  who  came  contained  a  number  of 
leading  minds  as  large  proportionately  as  the  roll 
of  those  who  remained  behind.  Something  that  was 
chivalrous,  something  that  was  courtly,  still  adhered 
to  those  heads,  much  learning  of  the  Mnd  that 
then  prevailed,  of  studied  history  and  language, 
perhaps  not  yet  much  practised  statesmanship,  but 
as  events  soon  showed,  a  great  capacity  for  it. 
Vane  and  Williams,  Endicott  and  Saltonstall,  Win- 
throp  the  senior  and  the  junior,  Hooker  and  Cotton, 
were  fair  types  of  the  leaders  on  both  sides,  most 
of  them  English  university  men,  all  of  them  such 
as  led  England  on  to  the  Revolution  of  1688  and 
rescued  her  Constitution.  I  allow  they  became 
especially  engrossed  in  the  high  mysteries  of  divini- 
ty, which  became  shaded  by  their  forest  abode,  and 
took  in  the  vagaries  of  a  larger  freedom  under  a 
new  sky.  But  as  they  erected  the  altars  of  the 
church  and  the  state  upon  the  same  Zion  and 
within  the  same  temple,  the  same  subtlety  which 
guarded  the  one,  also  guarded  the  other;  the  same 
enthusiasm,  if  you  please,  the  same  fanaticism,  which 
sustained  them  in  the  pursuit  of  abstruse  theology, 
also  sustained  them  in  the  pursuit  of  a  new  liberty; 
the  same  extravagant  rejection  of  authority  which 
made  them  faithful  dogmatists  for  the  church,  made 
them  obstinate  partisans  for  the  state;  the  same 
conscious  assurance  that  made  them  polemics  in 


17 


Address. 

religion,  made  them  republicans  in  politics.  During 
the  calm  and  study  of  the  residence  of  their  sect  in 
Switzerland,  by  the  "clear,  placid  Leman,"  in  the 
reflection  of  light  and  shadow  from  the  eternal 
monarchs  of  nature,  their  ideas  of  the  unseen 
world  had  become  consolidated,  their  ideas  of  the 
social,  civil  framework  had  become  codified;  they 
would  have  no  sovereign  in  their  hearts  save  God, 
no  sovereign  in  their  laws  not  subordinated  to  their 
interpretation  of  Him ;  as  the  phrase  goes,  they 
would  have  a  church  without  a  bishop,  a  state 
without  a  king.  Those  were  great  ideas  for  that 
age,  and  they  could  only  be  enforced  by  great  and 
original  minds,  comprehensive  and  flexible  enough 
for  the  founders  of  a  nation.  Now,  if  you  follow 
the  history  of  the  scene  on  which  these  views  were 
acted  out,  you  find  that  these  actors,  to  their  charac- 
ter as  theologians,  whatever  you  may  think  of  that, 
soon  added  the  acquired  character  of  astute,  wary 
and  stubborn  statesmen.  As  religionists  and  as 
politicians  their  path  must  soon  divide;  as  religion- 
ists they  carried  everything  in  their  own  way  and 
with  a  high  hand,  with  none  to  obstruct  them;  as 
politicians  the  shadows  of  kingly  pretensions  ad- 
vanced gradually  over  the  sea,  enveloped  them  in 
darkness  and  shut  them  in  to  their  wit's  end.  They 
were  obliged  to  supplement  religious  zeal  with  a 
large  worldly  wisdom,  and  all  the  way  from  about 
1640  to  1689  you  observe  in  the  directors  of  these 


LS 


Statesmanship  of  the  Colonial  Leaders. 

provinces  a  growing  genius  for  affairs,  a  chary 
taste  for  civil  policy,  a  certain  wise,  strong  sense  of 
diplomacy.  When  the  mailed  hand  of  royal  inter- 
ference approached,  so  long  as  they  were  too  feeble 
to  resist,  they  were  Fabian  in  their  policy,  and 
warded  off  the  hour.  On  grave  occasions  they 
convened  their  synods  and  held  their  fasts,  but 
these  became  a  school  and  an  education;  the  pulpits 
were  filled  by  acute  teachers,  who  preached  alto- 
gether on  the  right  side ;  so  that,  allowing  for  their 
greater  share  of  prayer  and  praise,  they  had  in  their 
synods  and  their  fasts  all  that  we  should  have  now 
in  our  best  chosen  constitutional  conventions.  There 
is  nothing  more  interesting  in  all  the  life  of  these 
progenitors  of  our  history  than  their  studied  use  of 
diplomacy  in  the  years  covering  the  fall  of  the  first 
Charles  and  the  rise  of  the  second,  with  Cromwell 
intervening — a  period  requiring  them  to  act  parts 
so  delicate  and  so  variant,  with  no  electric  cable  to 
supply  them  in  the  evening  with  the  policy  for  the 
next  morning.  Great  results  hung  suspended  on 
the  action  of  the  ministers  who  assembled  in  their 
synods  in  Boston — for  there  was  not  a  news- 
paper published  in  America  till  the  eighteenth 
century  —  and  they  rapidly  became  masters  of  the 
situation  more  by  their  reserved  power  in  diplomacy 
than  by  their  inspired  power  in  theology.  They 
were  preparing  their  generation  for  a  day  of  greater 

19 


Address. 

power,   when   the  bell   of  revolution  might   safely 
strike  the  hour. 

That  beyond  question  was  the  educational  period 
of  the  country,  as  youth  is  the  period  for  character 
in  the  individual  life.     It  was  her  education  under 
the  champions  of  her  freedom,  fitted  by  endowment 
and  culture  to  carry  her  through  the  tremendous 
process  God  had  ordained.     Such  was  their  situa- 
tion and  their  power.     A  kind  of  mediaeval  port  and 
mien,  something  like  an  intellectual  feudalism,  gave 
to   them   the   walk   of   masters;   they   admonished 
others  against  the  authority  of  kings  and  nobles, 
but  they  did  not  relinquish  the  authority  due  to 
themselves  as  chosen  vessels  of  the  divine  purpose 
for  the  coming  nation.     Under  their  treatment  of 
kings  and  parliaments  and  commissions,  their  con- 
stituents and  followers  inhaled  their  first  conception 
of  an  American  nationality.     Out  of  that  robust  and 
austere  school  came  the  broader  culture  and  sweeter 
dispositions  of  later  days.     Advanced  into  the  next 
century,  those  stern  and  dark  features  had  become 
softened  by  another  education,  by  schools  and  libra- 
ries more  purely  American,  by  a  younger  class  of 
scholars  spread  over  the  country  from  the  university 
at  Cambridge ;  but  we  ought  never  to  forget  that  the 
schools,    the    libraries,    and    the    university    were 
established  by  them.     Time  was  diifusing  their  mind 
like  the  waters  of  irrigation,  which,  as  they  receded 
from  the  shade  and  gloom  of  their  source,  took  the 

20 


A  decisive  Historic  Period. 

warmth  of  the  open  field  and  the  sparkle  of  the 
cheerful  sun.  Mankind  could  not  long  live  and  be 
happy  under  the  frowns  of  a  puritanical  theocracy. 
At  once  the  school  of  the  church  and  the  state,  as 
it  approached  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
it  exhibited  the  manifestations  of  change;  the  work 
had  been  laid  and  transmitted  to  a  different  genera- 
tion. Society  had  passed  through  the  transforma- 
tion which  in  Scotland  would  be  necessary  before 
she  could  welcome  Walter  Scott,  and  in  America 
before  she  would  trust  herself  in  the  arms  of  George 
Washington.  From  the  church  all  that  was  super- 
stitious, or  cruel,  or  whimsical  in  the  day  of  Cotton 
Mather  had  been  burned  away  in  the  expiatory 
fires  through  which  bodies  politic  must  sometimes 
pass,  and  it  rose  with  a  fresh  glory  in  the  grandeur 
of  Edwards,  the  learning  of  Cooper,  and  the  hero- 
ism of  Mayhew.  The  state,  too,  now  shone  with  a 
majesty  distinctively  its  own,  and  ascended  to  the 
respect  of  Christendom  under  the  eloquence  of  Otis, 
the  learning  and  strength  of  John  Adams,  the  mag- 
netic genius  of  Quincy  and  Warren,  the  wisdom  of 
Franklin  and  the  culture  of  Dickinson,  and  the 
unconquerable  will  of  Samuel  Adams.  But  all  that 
larger  growth  and  attraction,  all  that  wider  range  of 
tastes  and  ambitions  expanding  grandly  toward  the 
high  things  of  knowledge,  were  the  long  wrought, 
the  hard  taught  product  of  the  human  mind,  the 


21 


Address. 

human  will,  under  the  leadership  of  the  age  that 
had  gone  to  its  rest. 

A  more  critical  urgency  for  action  had  now 
arrived.  A  better  combined  array  of  moral  forces 
than  that  which  led  the  colonies  in  the  last  years  of 
their  dependence  and  the  first  of  their  union  we 
might  search  the  centuries  to  discover.  I  take  for 
granted  you  agree  with  me  that  the  more  .cultivated 
minds  take  the  lead  hi  civil  life.  There  is  a  theory 
that  public  revolutions  proceed  upward  from  the 
body  of  the  people,  and  control,  enforce  the  orders 
of  intelligence  above.  I  do  not  so  read  our  own  or 
any  other  history.  At  all  times,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
perhaps  more  appreciably  to  our  observation  in 
times  of  great  urgency  in  human  affairs,  the  reason- 
ings and  generous  sentiments  of  great  intellects 
work  their  way  into  the  common  channels  of  the 
general  mind,  and  fill  the  office  of  its  directory;  and 
the  attempt  to  make  our  own  country  an  exception 
to  the  rule  is  a  suggestion  of  flattery  which  the 
people  do  not  ask,  and  an  illusion  which  the  truth 
will  not  bear.  The  nature  of  men  has  not  changed 
since  the  old  essayist  declared  that  in  the  coalition 
of  human  society  nothing  is  more  pleasing  to  God, 
or  more  agreeable  to  reason,  than  that  the  highest 
mind  should  exercise  the  chiefest  power.  If  it  were 
not  so,  education  could  not  advance  upon  indi- 
viduals, nor  enlightened  progress  upon  nations. 
The  lower  strata  of  mind  draw  the  electric  fires  of 

22 


Mind  Governs. 

the  higher  masters.  Heads  of  wisdom  are  better 
than  princes  to  a  state  passing  through  its  crises. 
They  supply  intellectual  aliment  to  its  thought,  they 
impart  sympathetic  activity  to  its  torpid  faculties. 

Their  speech  betimes 

Inspires  the  general  heart ;   its  beauty  steals 
Brightening  and  purifying  through  the  air 
Of  common  life. 

And  there  is  another  part  of  this  law  governing 
public  opinion,  to  which  the  whole  race  is  subject;  I 
mean  the  spontaneous,  instinctive  acknowledgment 
of  intellectual  authority,  the  law  of  faith,  of  confi- 
dence in  superior  intelligence.  We  are  all  of  us 
and  always  under  such  a  lead.  Mr.  Carlyle,  who  is 
the  least  of  a  literary  demagogue,  puts  this  truth 
home  to  every  one  of  us  after  his  own  abrupt  and 
grotesque  manner:  "]S~ow  if  sheep  always,  how 
much  more  must  men  always,  have  their  chiefs,  their 
guides.  Man,  as  if  by  miraculous  magic,  imparts 
his  thoughts,  his  mood  of  mind,  to  man.  Of  which 
high,  mysterious  truth,  this  disposition  to  imitate,  to 
lead  and  to  be  led,  this  impossibility  not  to  lead 
(and  be  led)  is  the  most  constant  and  one  of  the 
simplest  manifestations."  And  the  globe  has  not 
borne  another  people  who  paid  greater  deference  to 
such  guides  than  our  own.  It  is  here  that  this  law 
of  our  nature  has  freer  and  fuller  "play  than  in  the 
countries  which  are  overshadowed  by  rank  and  caste, 
by  venerable  heraldry  and  names  artificial,  extend- 
ing over  generations  their  charm.  While  a  single 

23 


Address. 

family  and  its  aristocratical  connections  monopolized 
the  administration  of  England  during  a  generation, 
Chatham  was  admitted  to  power  only  because  the 
Almighty  had  clothed  him  with  characteristics  which 
overawed  mankind,  and  Burke  never  held  any  first- 
rate  office  at  all  under  government  during  the  whole 
of  his  magnificent  life.  But  in  this  country,  rank 
having  no  existence,  nothing  else  of  conventional 
kind  has  taken  its  place,  and  it  has  never  been 
possible  for  wealth,  or  any  fiction,  or  any  pretension 
to  withdraw  for  a  length  of  time  the  body  of  its 
citizenship  from  following  the  directory  of  wisdom. 
In  the  long  run  of  time  you  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
the  hero-worship  of  our  countrymen  takes  to  some 
uncommon  degree  of  lettered  fame,  some  rare 
combination  of  intellectual  powers,  some  form  or 
manifestation  of  special  genius  or  general  capacity. 
Of  our  countrymen  travelling  by  thousands  in 
foreign  lands,  while  one  turns  aside  from  Brussels 
to  visit  the  scene  of  the  battle  of  kings  at  Waterloo, 
ten  others  make  the  longer  journey  from  London  to 
Stratford  to  pay  the  tribute  of  their  veneration  at 
the  tomb  of  Shakespeare. 

I  return,  then,  to  my  topic,  that  in  the  dawn  of 
this  national  independency  there  was  at  work  upon 
popular  opinion'a  wise,  brilliant,  and  effective  array 
of  heads  which  is  not  easily  paralleled.  The 
colleges  were  in  tune  with  the  urgency,*  and  the 
pulpits  were  filled  by  a  ministry  of  patriotism 

24 


Intellectual  Chiefs  of  the  Revolution. 

toned  by  a  cultivated  wisdom.  The  field  of  civic 
discussion  was  under  the  training  of  a  class  of  men 
in  some  of  the  colonies  who  would  have  adorned 
the  best  of  commonwealths  at  the  most  brilliant  of 
its  periods ;  the  same  representative,  scholarly  states- 
men upon  whom  Chatham  pronounced  the  remark- 
able eulogium,  which  Franklin  from  the  gallery 
heard  him  deliver,  and  which  has  ever  since  been 
quoted  with  pride  on  these  shores.  For  a  classical, 
refined  public  speech,  coming  from  studied  men, 
but  penetrating  the  universal  heart,  it  was  a  golden 
age.  It  lifted  upward  and  onward  to  action  every 
degree  of  mediocrity  below  it.  Fifty  names  start 
up  for  mention  which  cannot  be  surpassed  in  our 
day.  In  the  South  were  Rutledge,  Gadsden,  Peyton 
Randolph,  Bland,  the  two  Lees,  most  of  them  edu- 
cated in  both  countries,  re-enforced  by  Jefferson  and 
his  peers,  who  breathed  into  the  public  spirit  their 
own  cultivated  chivalry;  in  the  centre  was  Dickin- 
son, fresh  from  his  law  of  the  Temple  at  London, 
finished  in  elegant  literature,  whose  thoughts  passed 
in  French  over  the  other  Continent,  to  whose  sup- 
port a  little  later  came  Franklin,  direct  from  the 
society  of  Burke  and  Pitt,  bringing  his  whole 
nature  enriched  for  his  country;  in  New  England, 
too  many  rather  than  too  few;  of  whom  was  Hop- 
kins, who  knew  all  poetry  and  all  history,  who, 
John  Adams  said,  instructed  him  four  years  in  com- 
mittee-room in  science  and  learning,  whose  old  age 


25 


Address. 

to  all  coming  in  contact  was  an  inspiration;  of 
whom  were  the  chiefs  of  Massachusetts,  whose  roll 
rounds  with  the  names  of  the  two  Adamses.  Samuel 
Adams  was  something  besides  a  pious  and  patriotic 
Puritan;  his  humanity  was  exquisite  and  his  erudi- 
tion was,  genteel,  blending  grace  and  attraction  with 
the  intensity  of  his  appeal.  John  Adams  educated 
the  colonies  to  an  intelligent  comprehension  of  the 
situation  which  was  necessary  to  go  before  action, 
and  in  this  work  he  more  completely  than  any  other 
man  of  this  nation  illustrated  the  proverb  that 
knowledge  is  power;  his  research  was  boundless  and 
his  talent  was  of  every  kind;  he  made  history  and 
the  Scriptures,  the  classic,  ancient  ages,  the  prin- 
ciples of  law  and  speculative  philosophy  familiar  to 
the  common  understanding,  while  he  rallied  the 
learned  professions  and  the  schools  of  the  land  to 
the  mighty  work  in  hand.  There  were  by  that  time 
as  able  lawyers  here  as  the  lawyers  of  the  Crown, 
and  he  was  at  their  head.  Scarcely  ever  before  had 
the  spirit  of  a  passing  time  called  into  such  intensity 
of  use  every  grace,  every  accomplishment  and  attri- 
bute of  the  upper  sphere  of  the  human  mind,  and 
never  before  had  any  people  so  confidingly  trusted 
to  it  their  hope  and  destiny.  They  would  follow 
only  the  wisest  and  best;  in  their  vast  undertaking 
they  would  employ  no  mediocrity;  Georgia,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  Massachusetts  would  have  no  less  an 
agent  in  London  than  Benjamin  Franklin;  New 

26 


Aid  from  the  Highest  Minds  of  England. 

York  with  its  salary  of  a  thousand  dollars  would 
have  no  other  than  Edmund  Burke.  They  believed 
that  "  a  great  empire  and  little  minds  go  ill  together." 
To  which  roll  in  the  hour  of  its  need  was  added  yet 
another — the  man  of  little  less  than  divine  virtue, 
the  Father  of  his  Country,  the  leader  of  her  armies, 
the  most  glorious  of  her  citizens,  the  founder  and 
protector  of  her  liberty,  he  who  despised  the  name 
of  king,  yet  himself  was  more  majestic,  whom  God 
manifestly  favored,  that  he  was  in  all  things  his 
helper  —  the  unapproached  and  unapproachable 
Washington. 

Nor  alone  were  their  chiefs  upon  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  This  national  fabric  was  shaped,  in  part, 
by  most  expert  hands  of  Englishmen.  In  the  pro- 
longed debates  of  many  years  there  was  a  Parlia- 
mentary minority  of  the  choicest  and  greatest  of 
the  realm,  who  spoke  for  justice  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  proudest  day  of  the  British  forum. 
By  general  consent  the  most  flourishing  period  of 
English  eloquence  extends  for  about  half  a  century 
from  the  maturity  of  Lord  Chatham's  genius  to  the 
death  of  Fox,  and  a  good  part  of  its  most  brilliant 
exhibitions  was  during  the  ten  years  which  covered 
the  American  questions.  Between  the  opening  and 
the  close  of  those  questions  passed  across  the  stage 
Grenville,  Barre,  North,  Camden,  Mansfield, 
Charles  Townshend,  Fox,  Burke,  and  the  heaven- 
born  orator,  the  elder  Pitt — enough  for  a  nation's 

27 


Address. 

history  and  a  nation's  glory.  The  parliamentary 
literature  of  that  school  can  meet  the  philosophical 
criticisms  of  Burke  himself;  it  can  stand  the  test  of 
time  and  the  admiration  of  ages,  because*  it  was 
founded  in  good  reason  and  just  sentiment.  It  was 
listened  to  in  the  speaking  by  some  of  our  leaders 
from  home  sitting  in  the  gallery,  among  whom  were 
Quincy  and  Franklin;  it  came  to  these  shores  in 
fast-sailing  packets,  was  spread  from  the  ice-fields 
to  the  palmettoes  by  the  wide-winged  press,  was 
repeated  from  mouth  to  mouth,  floated  in  the  air. 
It  was  not  all  upon  our  side  of  the  questions,  but  it 
passed  here  under  the  hands  of  masters,  was  sifted 
of  sophism  and  error,  was  sent  forth,  stirring  grand 
sentiments  of  duty,  and  circulated,  all-inspiring, 
over  the  New  World. 

Nor  again  to  the  schools  of  American  and  English 
authorities  alone  were  our  fathers  of  that  day  shut  in 
for  their  tuition.  From  another  continent,  another 
tongue,  and  another  religion  they  heard  voices  of 
lesson  and  sympathy.  We  are  forever  indebted  to 
France  for  an  early  and  a  late  infusion  of  lofty 
sentiment  which  has  pervaded  our  public  life.  In 
the  story  of  religious  and  romantic  adventure  dis- 
played in  exploring  and  settling  this  country  the 
French  enthusiasts  stand  out  with  radiant  linea- 
ments upon  the  historical  canvas.  Advancing 
always  within  the  orders  of  the  Catholic  church, 
penetrating  through  primeval  forests  to  the  far 

28 


French  Enthusiasts  our  Leaders. 

West,  enduring  every  hardship  and  privation  of  pio- 
neers, leaving  their  pathway  in  the  wilderness  every- 
where blazed  by  the  lily  and  the  cross,  ministering 
in  their  faith  amid  the  vortex  of  savage  tribes  which 
whirled  like  angels  of  darkness  around  them,  one 
after  another  yielding  up  their  life  in  solitary  martyr- 
dom, in  the  extremest  hour  chanting  in  the  Lathi  of 
the  schools  of  France  hymns  which  even  then  were  a 
thousand  years  old,  they  have  left  in  every  French 
town  of  ]STorth  America,  in  our  written  annals  and 
unwritten  traditions,  the  traces  of  their  spiritual  and 
intellectual  heroism.  Expelled  at  length  as  a  po- 
litical power  from  this  country  by  Great  Britain,  the 
Nemesis  of  history  took  in  hand  their  vindication. 
While  the  gallant  Wolfe,  by  a  magical  stroke,  won 
to  the  British  Crown  every  French  possession  east 
of  the  Mississippi,  there  were  those  at  work  in  the 
silence  of  studies  about  the  gay  capital  of  France, 
engineering  an  intellectual  revolution  which,  within 
twenty  years,  would  sweep  from  these  States  the 
last  vestige  of  British  dominion.  About  the  year 
1763,  when  everything  here  was  ceded  to  the  Crown 
of  England,  the  spirit  of  a  new  philosophy  was 
spreading  over  France  and  radiating  upon  Great 
Britain  and  America.  To  those  who  were  especially 
engrossed  in  the  study  it  presented  itself,  perhaps 
under  no  deep  sense  of  responsibility,  as  the  fresh 
luxury  of  newly  enfranchised  minds,  but  to  the 
world  it  bore  the  fruits  of  political  revolution.  The 


29 


Address. 

satire  of  Voltaire,  aimed  at  the  Church  which 
needed  it  much,  fell  with  effectual  blow  upon  the 
State  which  needed  it  more.  The  ethereal  and 
radical  eloquence  of  Rousseau  circulated  as  an 
atmosphere ;  the  young  men  crowded  the  benches  and 
the  salons  of  the  new  school  in  all  the  larger  cities 
of  the  kingdom;  and  at  one  time,  just  before  the 
declaration  of  our  independence,  more  than  half  a 
dozen  of  bold  teachers  of  speculation,  wit,  levity, 
reason,  and  philosophy  were  seated  around  the 
throne  as  its  premier  and  its  advisers.  It  was  the 
preparatory  school  for  modern  revolution.  It  was 
classical  in  its  study  of  the  ancient  histories.  It 
soon  found  its  theory  and  passion  impersonated  in 
the  youthful  Lafayette,  whose  early  readings  had 
imaged  in  his  reflection  and  love  the  models  of 
lost  republics,  and  quickly  afterward  it  found  the 
seal  of  its  assurance  in  the  treaty  of  alliance  with 
the  United  States.  The  authorities  of  that  keen, 
speculative,  daring  philosophy  gave  the  touch  of 
fate  to  American  independence.  And  in  the  memo- 
rable reception  of  Benjamin  Franklin  at  Versailles, 
when  that  brilliant  court,  destined  so  soon  to  pass 
away,  was  captivated  by  the  decorous  simplicity 
which  the  great  American  knew  quite  well  when 
and  how  to  wear,  we  behold  the  last  ceremony  in 
which  old  institutions  and  old  prescriptions,  repre- 
sented by  kings  and  nobles,  bowed  unawares  before 
the  divinity  of  a  new  liberty  and  a  new  world — the 

30 


French  Enthusiasts  our  Leaders. 

ceremony  in  which  that  new  liberty  and  new  world, 
in  its  plain,  untitled  representative,  returned  the 
salute  to  the  masters  behind  the  throne  who  were 
moving  the  world  to  revolution.  I  have  never 
wondered  that  Jefferson,  who  after  our  peace  passed 
four  grateful  years  at  Paris,  intimate  and  favorite 
with  its  eminent  philosophers,  caught  "the  habit 
and  the  power  of  dalliance  with  those  large,  fair 
ideas  of  freedom  so  dear,  so  irresistible"  to  the 
French  people.  Almost  a  century  has  since  passed, 
and  his  name  is  even  now  treasured  in  the  hearts  of 
the  French  leaders  of  opinion  as  that  of  a  master 
and  instructor — an  impressive  illustration  of  the 
ceaseless  international  exchange  of  thought.  Three 
years  ago  Charles  Sumner  came  to  my  apartment 
in  Paris  directly  from  an  interview  with  the  leader 
of  the  more  advanced  Republicans,  now  recognized 
as  their  leader  probably  by  a  larger  number  of  men 
than  any  other  living  civilian  in  any  country,  the 
bold  and  eloquent  Gambetta.  He  related  to  me  the 
details  of  the  conversation.  Gambetta  said :  "  What 
France  most  needs  at  this  present  time  is  a  Jeffer- 
son." I  will  not  keep  back  the  reply  of  the  great 
Senator :  "  You  want  first  a  Washington,  and  your 
Jefferson  will  come  afterwards." 

My  limitations  compel  me  to  allusions  only  on  the 
field  of  our  history.  We  usually  observe  that  the 
times  requiring  the  largest  exercise  of  the  intel- 
lectual forces,  and  so  bringing  into  activity  the 

31 


Address. 

supremest  men,  have  been  periods  of  civil,  not  of 
military  events,  those  preceding  or  following  the 
trial  of  war.  Succeeding  to  the  Revolution  came 
the  exigent  time  for  organizing  under  permanent 
forms — the  constitutional  epoch.  That  term  of 
seven  years  was  the  test  to  virtue,  to  the  capacity 
for  outlook  and  statesmanly  projection,  without  the 
aid  of  any  light  reflected  from  older  nations  upon 
the  questions  to  be  adjusted  here.  If  you  reflect 
how  divided  this  people. were  after  the  attainment  of 
independence ;  that  all  local  traditions,  prejudices, 
and  attachments  which  had  been  buried  in  the  war, 
then  returned  with  a  risen  life  and  vigor;  that  di- 
versities of  origin,  blood,  and  temperament  resumed 
their  individual  forces;  that  idiocrasies  of  religion 
became  sympathetic  with  localities;  that  the  vast 
bulwarks  of  the  natural  configuration  of  the  conti- 
nent frowned  in  the  way  of  our  unity, — you  only 
recall  hi  part  the  division  and  distress  of  the  people 
of  the  United  States  under  the  confederation.  It 
soon  grew  to  a  public  opinion  which  alternated 
between  national  hope  and  national  despair.  The 
Convention  which  assembled  in  1787  to  organize  the 
fragmentary  elements  which  now  constitute  the  most 
intense  nation  hi  existence,  over  which  Washington 
presided,  was  in  a  capacious  civic  wisdom  superior 
to  any  other  of  modern  record  —  superior,  in  my 
judgment,  to  that  which  had  met  in  the  same  hall 
twelve  years  before,  upon  which  Pitt  had  lavished 

32 


Intellectual  Mastery  secured  the  Constitution. 

his  rhetoric  of  praise.  Washington  carried  there  a 
carefully  prepared  synopsis  of  the  ancient  examples, 
but  amid  the  great  questions  and  great  debaters  that 
surrounded  him  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
unrolled  his  manuscript.  In  the  lead  of  the  discus- 
sions South  Carolina,  Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  and 
~NQW  York  figured  with  unchallenged  supremacy. 
And  when,  afterward,  the  work  of  that  body  was 
submitted  for  the  consent  of  the  several  states,  the 
debate  in  popular  meetings  and  in  state  conventions 
summoned  to  the  front  every  giant  mind.  The 
scales  were  turned  at  last  by  the  pure  argumenta- 
tion of  two  men.  I  have  sometimes  asked  myself 
whether,  under  similar  surroundings  in  our  own  day, 
beset  with  the  same  excitement  and  irritation,  the 
present  generation  would  in  the  same  degree  as  that 
submit  its  judgment  to  the  sway  of  a  series  of 
papers  so  calm,  passionless  and  dialectical  as  those 
which,  under  the  name  of  The  Federalist,  Madison 
and  Hamilton,  but  chiefly  the  latter,  addressed  to 
their  country.  With  equal,  with  greater  effect, 
Madison  in  the  Convention  of  Virginia^  Hamilton  in 
that  of  New  York,  made  their  great  endowments 
tributary  to  the  solemn  decision.  Madison  was  bom 
symmetrical  for  the  highest  dignities  of  the  states- 
man, and  culture  completed  the  work;  sound  learn- 
ing was  added  to  a  sound  judgment,  and  his  mind 
was  illuminated  for  perspicacity  and  far  perspective. 
He,  and  he  alone,  saved  the  government  in  Virginia, 

33 


Address. 

where,  though  young  in  years,  he  was  already  a 
popular  idol.  The  issue  hung  suspended  upon 
New  York,  the  last,  the  eleventh  state  which  was 
necessary  to  make  plenary  the  consent  and  ratifica- 
tion, where  it  was  carried  after  immense  exertions. 
All  contemporary  accounts  and  traditions  still  ex- 
isting carry  to  the  credit  of  Hamilton  that  imperial 
result.  He  was  then  thirty-one  years  of  age,  in  the 
bloom  of  his  faculties,  the  finest  genius  known  to 
American  public  life.  His  ingenuous  nature  and 
exquisite  sensibility,  from  a  Huguenot  descent,  the 
unshackled  outline  and  clear  order  of  his  thought 
warmed  to  color  by  the  fervor  of  a  tropical  birth, 

• 

the  flexibility,  simplicity,  and  delicious  amenity  of 
his  style,  as  pure  as  Addison's,  his  far-distant  search 
and  reach,  his  climacteric  ascending  in  argument, 
his  judgment,  which  Washington  said  was  "intui- 
tively great,"  displayed  him  in  his  public  efforts  as 
one  of  nature's  thinkers,  orators,  jurists,  and  states- 
men. For  an  entire  generation,  not  ending  at  his 
death,  he  was  to  one-half  of  his  countrymen  the 
interpreter  of  his  era.  He  was  a  leader  who 
never  flattered  his  followers.  To  him,  by  con- 
sent of  all,  the  civic  chaplet  falls  for  the  decision 
which  gave  this  government  to  the  North  American 
Republic.  In  the  wandering  of  a  boy  from  college, 
straying  many  years  ago  among  the  tombstones 
which  mark  the  ancient  worthies  of  New  Jersey,  in 
the  church-yard  at  Princeton,  I  stood  by  the  side  of 

34 


The  Masters  of  Constitutional  Interpretation. 

a  newly  made  grave,  which  bore  as  yet  no  trace  of 
designation  at  its  head.  But  I  conld  not  be  ignorant 
as  to  its  tenant  after  reading  the  inscription  over 
the  adjoining  spot  of  earth  consecrated  to  the  sleep- 
ing dust  of  his  kinsman,  his  ancestor,  the  glorified 
Edwards.  It  was  the  grave  of  Aaron  Burr.  "At 
the  mention  of  that  name  the  spirit  of  Hamilton 
starts  up  to  rebuke  the  intrusion — to  drive  back  the 
foul  apparition  to  its  gloomy  abode,  and  to  con- 
centrate all  generous  feeling  on  itself." 

I  can  illustrate  my  subject  by  only  a  brief  allusion 
to  our  next  and  longer  historical  stage  which  fol- 
lowed under  the  constitution.  It  was  the  era  of 
development,  bringing  to  the  direction  of  the  public 
life  of  this  country  all  that  splendid  succession 
which  opened  with  Marshall  and  Hamilton,  Jeffer- 
son and  Madison,  and  closed  with  the  death  of  Clay 
and  Calhoun,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Webster  and 
Everett — an  array  not  surpassed  in  recent  time  by 
the  chiefs  of  English  administration.  It  is  familiar 
to  many  now  living  how  trustingly  the  people  hung 
upon  their  lips  and  took  their  direction  in  all  the 
policies  of  growth  and  expansion.  But  it  was  a 
stage  of  greater  signification  than  mere  develop- 
ment; it  was  our  historical  period  of  interpretation. 
As  you  know,  at  the  close  of  Washington's  active 
day  all  the  questions  and  possibilities  of  questions 
touching  the  interpretation  of  tlie  Constitution, 
which  had  been  hushed  in  his  sacred  presence,  flew 

35 


Address. 

into  ceaseless  activity,  and  with  only  an  occasional 
interval  continued  to  excite  the  general  mind  down 
to  1860,  when  the  sword  became  the  arbiter.  During 
that  protracted  discussion  and  discordancy  the 
treatment  of  the  subject  assumed  the  highest  forms 
of  philosophical  argument,  and  called  into  use  the 
blended  acuteness  and  breadth  of  jurists  and  states- 
men. The  existence  of  the  government  would  be 
determined  by  the  settlement  of  that  question  of 
interpretation,  so  complex,  so  profound,  in  many 
respects  so  metaphysical  in  its  kind,  that  the  people 
by  whom  it  must  be  settled  were  largely  compelled 
to  accept  upon  faith  the  opinions  of  their  champions; 
the  grander  the  leadership,  the  more  trustful  the 
following.  It  narrowed  down  at  length  to  but  two 
men,  of  whom  it  may  be  said  that  one  of  them 
argued  the  country  into  the  greatest  of  modern 
wars,  and  that  the  other  prepared  it  for  a  successful 
deliverance.  Since  the  death  of  Washington,  Jeffer- 
son, and  Hamilton  no  two  men  have  held  the  intel- 
lectual trust  of  such  large  numbers  and  over  so 
many  years  as  Calhoun  and  Webster  pending  the 
questions  of  constitutional  interpretation.  Calhoun 
was  the  master  of  his  school.  Exemplar  of  high, 
attracting  personal  qualities,  eloquent  with  a  logic 
which  was  made  fervid  by  intensity  of  conviction, 
reasoning  unerring  from  his  elements  and  rejecting 
every  expedient*  or  phenomenal  modification,  bring- 
ing to  questions  of  construction  the  cold  and 

36 


The  Masters  of  Constitutional  Interpretation. 

unrelenting  methods  of  science  regardless  of  the 
assistant  or  opposing  forces  of  practical  reasons,  he 
towered  above  his  associates  in  belief  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  undiscriminating  ranks  that  sometimes 
understood  and  always  trusted  him.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve we  should  have  had  the  late  war  if  he  had 
lived,  but  his  death  left  his  school  to  drift  into  it 
upon  the  teachings  of  his  lifetime.  The  vindication 
of  the  government  by  the  sword  in  last  resort  must 
be  traced  as  the  logical  result  of  the  opposite  school, 
over  which  his  great  rival  presided.  I  do  not  over- 
look that  Webster  had  profound  and  luminous 
associates  in  his  high  argument  of  twenty  years  for 
the  true  doctrine  of  the  government,  yet  he  was  the 
acknowledged  leader,  the  accepted  champion  and 
defender  of  the  Constitution.  And  now  that  the 
rebellion  is  by  both  sides  conceded  a  failure,  now 
that  the  principles  which  he  maintained  are  by  both 
sides  admitted  as  a  finality  by  trial  of  war,  it  is 
becoming  to  our  intelligence  and  magnanimity  to 
recognize  the  champion  of  the  faith  which  carried 
us  through.  For  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that 
before  the  shedding  of  blood  it  was  under  his  eluci- 
dation that  the  consolidation  of  the  Union  had  be- 
come so  assured  in  the  convictions  and  affections  of 
the  people  as  to  have  prepared  them  for  the  conflict. 
To  him  above  others  we  owe  that  sentiment  of 
nationalism  prevailing  over  statism,  which  became 
compacted  and  unified  with  the  very  fibre  of  the 

37 


Address. 

American  people,  and  without  which  the  Union 
would  have  parted  at  the  touch  of  arms.  He  first 
made  familiar  to  modern  ears  the  principles  upon 
which  alone  the  government  could  live,  and  his 
pupils,  his  followers,  were  attached  to  the  majority 
which  upheld  it  to  the  last.  It  is  time  that  all  fair 
minds  should  turn  from  the  cloud  which  shaded  his 
closing  days,  to  a  full  perception  of  his  instructions 
which  now  shine  with  advancing  splendor  in  the 
Constitution  he  defended.  And  in  their  enjoyment 
of  the  fresh,  the  final  triumph  of  their  government, 
which  his  active  genius  made  doubly  sure,  if  a  just 
and  grateful  people  shall  divide  its  honors  between 
the  leaders  of  its  thought  and  the  leaders  of  its 
armies,  as  England  divided  her  honors  between 
Pitt  and  Wellington,  then  henceforth  words  of 
reproach  scattered  by  careless  tongue  over  the  grave 
of  Webster  will  no  longer  be  accepted  as  the 
language  of  duty  or -justice,  but  will  be  treated  with 
only  that  degree  of  respect  which  belongs  to  in- 
gratitude, to  flippancy  and  to  folly. 

But  it  is  time  to  draw  these  reflections  to  a  close. 
I  must  not  even  glance  at  the  later  —  perhaps  loftier 
— part  of  our  history,  fresh  in  all  our  hearts  as  to 
its  causes  and  its  results,  its  immortal  deeds  and 
immortal  actors.  Let  it  all  pass  for  another  occa- 
sion. A  duty  remains  for  each  generation  of  intel- 
ligent, educated  citizens.  The  day  of  intellectual 
guidance  never  goes  by.  All  these  agencies  and 

38 


Conclusion. 

methods  of  a  more  diffused  intellectual  life,  all 
these  potent  influences  of  a  more  distributed  educa- 
tion over  more  numerous  gradations  of  intelligence 
only  render  essential  a  higher  standard  for  the 
higher  masters.  The  advanced  seminaries  will  still 
continue  the  advanced  guard  of  a  well  sustained 
nationality  and  liberty.  Although  the  wants  of  the 
age  have  spurred  into  activity  the  wonderful  divi- 
sions and  subdivisions  of  sciences  and  arts,  and 
although  the  colleges  must  measurably  pass  under 
the  change,  yet  so  long  as  the  springs  of  the  human 
soul  remain,  a  broad  and  liberal  culture,  all  the 
generous  sentiments  which  sciences  can  neither 
generate  nor  suppress,  the  inspiring  study  of  old 
language  and  old  history,  the  freedom  of  general 
learning,  the  increasing  catholicity  of  modern  ethics 
will  still  plead  at  the  door  of  every  college  in  the 
land  for  that  sustenance  upon  which  so  many  past 
leaders  have  thriven  to  usefulness  and  power. 
There  are  still  juices  in  the  old-time  study  for  the 
best  manhood  of  a  nation.  The  colleges  would  be 
the  last,  the  forlorn  hope  of  a  decaying  people.  It 
is  our  reasonable  expectation  that  this  Union  will 
last  through  the  ages,  but  if  in  the  Providence  of 
God,  which  stretches  beyond  our  sight,  its  unity 
and  glory  shall  ever  pass  away,  let  the  last  signal 
which  shall  be  heard  in  its  praise  and  defence  come 
from  the  chiming  bells  of  its  universities. 


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